Weight is one of the most crucial factors in determining the viability of manned space travel, such as a mission to mars. Ostensibly, much of the technology needed for manned space travel is already in place but its weight is prohibitive. Particularly, life support related technologies are currently too heavy for an astronaut to carry for a reasonable duration without exhaustion. The deficit caused by weight for a life support system is also a deficit for other endeavors where a relatively long use of the system, including the use in a mining or other environment during emergency or other situations where the atmosphere is not conducive to breathing.
There are two crucial parts of such a life support system, those being carbon dioxide (CO2) removal and oxygen (O2) supply. Current CO2 removal technologies are not suitable for use on a long space mission, such as a mars mission, because of their weight and may not be appropriate for interaction with the Martian environment. State of the art advanced CO2 removal systems employ lithium hydroxide canisters for CO2 removal. Such a system requires approximately sixty pounds of consumable lithium hydroxide for a proposed five day Mars surface mission. To decrease such weight penalties on a mission to mars, it is imperative to employ an alternative system. Cycling bed and permeable membranes systems are also unsuitable because the high CO2 concentration in the Martian atmosphere, along with other environmental variables, precludes simply venting the CO2 after its removal from a spacesuit. Additionally a source of O2 is also a requirement for the life support system, and again the weight of an O2 source, such as an oxygen tank, must be considered. Vital O2 is bound up in the CO2 molecule, yet, none of the CO2 removal technologies mentioned above capitalize on the use of the CO2 as an O2 source.
Hence, new methods must be developed or older/existing alternatives must be perfected to remove CO2 from the space suit, without the need for venting, and to recover the oxygen from the CO2 molecule. Indeed, if a system is able to capture and recycle all the oxygen from the exhaled CO2, it may be possible to considerably reduce the need for additional O2 sources (such as oxygen tanks) and hence gain significant weight savings.